Марія БровінськаAI Eng
27 August 2026, 09:00
2026-08-27
“We love the word AI. Sometimes so much that we get the impression that if you add AI to a product, it automatically becomes effective.” 7 questions for Aidrones CEO — about NRCs, engineers, and overvalued technologies in Defense Tech
Ukrainian DefTech has long ceased to be a market for individual enthusiasts and volunteer developments. Companies compete for orders, engineers, technology, and speed of scaling — and at the same time have to constantly adapt products to the real conditions of war.
The guest of the new issue of «7 Questions for the DefTech CEO» is Kostyantyn Gushcha, co-owner and CEO of AIDrones. We talked about the challenges Ukrainian manufacturers face today, where the market is most competitive, and what the next stage of DefenseTech’s development could be.
Ukrainian DefTech has long ceased to be a market for individual enthusiasts and volunteer developments. Companies compete for orders, engineers, technology, and speed of scaling — and at the same time have to constantly adapt products to the real conditions of war.
The guest of the new issue of «7 Questions for the DefTech CEO» is Kostyantyn Gushcha, co-owner and CEO of AIDrones. We talked about the challenges Ukrainian manufacturers face today, where the market is most competitive, and what the next stage of DefenseTech’s development could be.
— What is the biggest problem facing Ukrainian softtech right now? What pain is bothering your business the most right now?
Speaking specifically about us, what worries me most is not even the question of whether we can create technologies. We can. Over the years, Ukraine has learned very well to quickly create new solutions, test them, and modify them literally on the fly.
The question is different — how to ensure that the technology that already works and is really needed at the front is there in sufficient quantities.
We work a lot with evacuation. And today it is a huge problem. Due to drones, FPV, mining, constant monitoring of routes, it becomes extremely difficult to pick up a wounded person in the usual way in many situations. And for evacuation, people and transport are needed — and as a result, we are risking not one soldier, but several.
The NRC is currently developing a lot in Ukraine. But if we talk specifically about complexes that are initially created around the task of evacuating the wounded, taking into account their transportation, protection, fixation, and speed of evacuation, this direction still needs to be developed very strongly. At the state level, first of all.
Actually, that’s exactly how we created MAUL. Not as a universal platform, to which we later decided to add evacuation, but around a specific problem: how to pick up a wounded person, how to save a life, how to return a person to their family.
— What technology is most overrated today? And what, on the contrary, is underrated?
I think we love the word AI so much these days. Sometimes so much so that we get the impression that if you add AI to a product, it automatically becomes technological and efficient.
I don’t want to say that artificial intelligence or autonomy are not needed. On the contrary, this is a huge direction of development. But on the battlefield, first your car should simply get there. It should work in dust, swamp, under load, have normal communication, be maintainable. And it is desirable that it can be quickly put back into operation if something happens.
If we talk about underrated technologies, I would name the internal combustion engine. In the context of the NRC, we very quickly switched to electric solutions and seemed to forget the technology that has proven its reliability for decades. And in war, it is not how new a solution is, but how well it performs the task that matters.
— Who is the most difficult person for you to hire and why? How do you solve this issue?
It is indeed difficult to find good engineers. But it is even more difficult to find not those who are just looking for a job, but those who actually work: take responsibility, show initiative, learn and bring tasks to a result. For us, this is more important than narrow experience in miltech.
— What skill or skills are currently the most valuable for an engineer in defense tech? Why?
Probably the first is the ability to learn and adapt very quickly.
Because there is no such thing here: we wrote a technical specification for two years in advance and now we are calmly working on it. The battlefield is changing faster. The second is systematicity. You can be a very strong specialist in your narrow field, but you still need to understand the entire product. How mechanics is connected to electronics, how the connection affects the application scenario, how what you drew will then be manufactured and repaired.
And the third, I would say, is a normal attitude towards feedback)).
In our military, a person is not just a «product user.» He is a person who can test your solution in conditions that you cannot fully recreate in any laboratory.
Therefore, an engineer who knows how to not only create, but also hears: here it is inconvenient, here it takes a long time, here it is difficult, here it needs to be done differently — and quickly change it.
— What does civilian IT misunderstand about military technology?
Perhaps the fact that defense tech is roughly the same as IT, just products now for the military.
No. The price of a mistake is completely different here.
Something went wrong in a civilian product — you released an update, fixed a bug, the user received a new version. Here, your product can at that moment perform the evacuation of a wounded person. And this greatly changes the attitude towards everything, to testing, to reliability, to speed of response, to responsibility.
Second, defense tech is actually a lot about hardware. About production. About how to turn your prototype into a hundred identical machines, then a thousand, how to maintain them, repair them, teach people how to use them. And most importantly, to manufacture them not only in Ukraine.
Making one car that drives is really cool. But that doesn’t mean you’ve created a product that works.
— What will war be like in 2–3 years from a technological point of view?
You could say that I want us to celebrate the victory in 2–3 years and talk about these technologies from the perspective of the experience that helped bring it closer)).
I think the main trend is already clear: humans will be increasingly removed from the most dangerous tasks. Where a soldier goes today, a robot must go or fly tomorrow. This applies not only to strike systems. This includes reconnaissance, logistics, transportation of ammunition, mining, demining, evacuation.
There will be more autonomy, more machine vision, more solutions that can continue to perform the task in difficult communication conditions. But I don’t think that in two years there will be some single technology that will change everything and war will become completely different. Rather, it will be a constant race. You made a new solution — the enemy found a countermeasure. You changed the solution — he adapted again.
Therefore, the one who goes through this cycle faster will win. And for us, it is fundamentally important that in this technological race we do not forget why we are doing all this in the first place. For me, the real development of technology is when we can transfer more and more dangerous tasks to machines, not people.
— What would you like to say to IT professionals who are hesitating whether or not to go to deftech?
I definitely wouldn’t encourage someone to go into defense tech just because it’s trendy right now. It’s a complex industry. It’s very fast-paced, very responsible, and often there’s no comfortable planning horizon.
But if it is important for a person to understand why they do their job, there are no problems with this. In our case, everything is very simple: we create an NRC that helps save lives. And the main thing for us is to do everything so that thanks to technology, as many people as possible return alive.
And I think that civilian IT now definitely has something to bring to this industry. We need very different people — programmers, engineers, electronics, specialists in computer vision, embedded, product, production. But you have to be prepared for the fact that your solution here will be evaluated not by the presentation and not by the number of users.
It will be evaluated by whether it has fulfilled its task in real conditions. Here you understand very well why you are doing your work, because its result is not abstract indicators, but a real impact on what is happening on the front.
«I would advise those IT professionals who are hesitant to move into Defense Tech to change their mindset.» 7 questions for DefTech CEO: owner of SKIF NVK about industry problems, personnel, and product evolution
«The hardest thing is finding an engineer who can translate a problem into a technical solution.» 7 questions for the CEO of XTI Engineering, which creates demining equipment
«We once believed in drones. Now we have to believe in missiles.» BlueBird Tech co-founder on the new stage of Ukrainian miltech, dependence on China and the shortage of engineers — 7 questions for the CEO
«The biggest problem, as well as the biggest opportunity, of the deftech industry is the existence of Russia.» 7 questions for the CEO of HIMERA about technology, the talent shortage, AI and the future of war
«The one who turns data into decisions and decisions into action faster will win.» 7 questions for SKIFTECH CPO about overrated AI, talent shortages, and the war of the future
«Чи є у мене талант, якщо комп’ютер може імітувати мене?». Штучний інтелект пише книги авторам Amazon Kindle. The Verge поспілкувався з авторами та виявив багато цікавого
Письменники-романісти використовують штучний інтелект для створення своїх творів. Видання про технології The Verge поспілкувалося з письменницею Дженніфер Лепп, яка випускає нову книгу кожні дев’ять тижнів, й дізналося про те, як працює штучний інтелект для написання романів. Наводимо адаптований переклад статті.
Have important news to share? Message our Telegram bot
Key events and useful links in our Telegram channel
